Roundup: Keeping the focus on the distraction

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If our Parliament were at all serious, we would see House of Commons committee studies be actual serious affairs. But we’re no longer a serious Parliament, and MPs seem to go out of their way to demonstrate this at every opportunity. Yesterday it was the government operations committee, which is studying those McKinsey contracts, and they had an expert from Carleton University before them, who studies the use of external consultants by governments. She kept telling them that the focus on McKinsey was a distraction from the real problems. But what did the Conservatives in particular want to ask about? McKinsey, because they think it’s a political winner for them to start building this bullshit conspiracy theory that somehow Dominic Barton is secretly running Canada, and that McKinsey got all of these contracts because Trudeau likes Barton (never mind that the McKinsey contracts are on the extremely low end of the consultancy scale).

If we had a serious Parliament, they would have asked better questions and been more on the ball about the larger problem. But we don’t, and instead we got a bunch of showboating for the cameras, which will all wind up in social media shitposts.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 342:

Russian forces have been shelling both Kharkiv and Kherson, hitting residential buildings in both cities, while moving on the towns of Maryinka and Vuhledar, which are near Bakhmut. Meanwhile, France and Poland appear to be seriously considering getting fighter jets like F-16s to Ukraine, even though the Americans are unwilling.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau defended his special representative for combatting Islamophobia, Amira Elghawaby, from criticism and calls for her resignation yesterday.
  • The federal government underspent by $38 billion last year, but much of that was because of COVID funds not needed, and delays to major projects including ships.
  • Marco Mendicino says he’s asked all departments in his portfolio to check for security gaps, while the RCMP say there are no breaches with Hytera equipment.
  • The government has ordered DND to drop its appeal of a court decision that extends the deadline for sexual misconduct claimants to join a class-action lawsuit.
  • The new chair of the CRTC says that a new internet pricing model is on the way in the next few months.
  • Public sector union PSAC is calling for a 47 percent salary increase over three years, which is why the government says they’re bargaining in good faith.
  • MPs unanimous passed a non-binding motion about declaring the Wagner Group a terrorist entity, but that’s not how these declarations get made, so it’s performance.
  • The Procedure and House Affairs committee says they want hybrid sittings to stay with some exceptions, and I am gods damned furious (and will write more later).
  • Jagmeet Singh apparently had a sit-down meeting with Trudeau about healthcare in advance of next week’s meeting with the premiers.
  • Doctors in Nova Scotia are pointing out how much of a burden paperwork required by the province is on their time.
  • The Quebec government is calling for the resignation of Amira Elghawaby, because of course they are. (No Islamophobia there!)
  • Ontario Green leader Mike Schreiner says he’s going to “take time” to think about the calls for him to run for the provincial Liberal leadership, and I can’t even.
  • Danielle Smith now wants to fight about expanding MAiD, which tracks.
  • Justin Ling pays a visit to Vancouver on the eve of their partial drug decriminalisation and what effect it hopes to have on their opioid problem.
  • Althia Raj suggests that Trudeau spend his time proving to Canadians that government works, lest he be overtaken by Poilievre’s “broken” narrative.

Odds and ends:

For National Magazine, I delve into Friday’s decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada on mandatory minimum sentences, and racial justice in sentencing.

My Loonie Politics Quick Take looks at Bill C-11 finishing its ride in the Senate, and the coming back-and-forth with government over amendments to it.

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.

3 thoughts on “Roundup: Keeping the focus on the distraction”

  1. Unfortunately, for the advisor on Islamophobia, she made some terrible remarks and again we see that the Prime Minister did not do due diligence.
    If a rule is to teach lessons to all French speaking, Canadian, which it appears that this is what she understands her role to be, then she has no credibility and appears very partisan. The Quebec government is quite right in asking for her to resign. It’s too easy for English Canada to simply again do Quebec bashing. It’s not acceptable.

    • Not QUITE as bad a gaffe as George Santos, but somewhere within a notch or two of Julie Payette. The appointment was based on the assumed example someone would set, based on their most exemplary efforts. In Payette’s case, they overlooked how bad a manager she was. In Elghawaby’s case, they overlooked how much she had pissed off Quebec (not unjustifiably, but still…). Not Trudeau’s unique sin, though. The Harper government appointed Christiane Ouimet as the first Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, and she blew up in their faces as well, because she was also a bad manager.

      As we are coming to learn about Jean Vanier, pretty much everyone has blemishes, so the odds are that if a political opponent wants to find something, they’re going to find it, no matter how much scrutiny one applies. A damn shame.

  2. McKinsey.
    I like how the Conservatives are completely ignoring the share of consulting contracts that have gone to the big 5, over the years: McKinsey, KPMG, Ernst & Young, Deloitte, Price Waterhouse, and focussing on the one, as if it was some kickback scheme. The reality is that if you’ve written successful bids for contracts before, you’re going to be skilled enough to write successful ones in future. A bit like “being famous for being famous”, one becomes successful because you were successful.
    The attribution to “something unkosher” relies on the public (and probably the politicians as well) having little idea about how and why such consulting contracts get used. Part of it is because if some analysis and report is going to be even mildly critical of a department’s efforts, that criticism HAS to come from outside, or at least appear that way. Indeed, when an OAG report comes out, castigating department X for something,you can bet *some* of the criticism levelled came from staff in that department, but it has to LOOK like it’s coming from outside in order to appear “objective”. As well, the broader public has little sense of just how many federal entities are way too small to have the analytic capacity to produce reports, so they rely on contracting out. Maybe the bigger departments use consultants for the appearance of objectivity, but there’s a LOT of federal entities with fewer than 300 FTEs who simply don’t have the people to do it.

    As much as I think it a bit of a made-up scandal, I have three concerns here. One is that, for those departments that ARE big enough to have internal capacity equivalent to, and sometimes even better than, the big consulting firms, letting smart analysts lie fallow is a waste of talent. The other is that, if one is seeking an objective analysis, just how hard is a consulting firm going to bite the hand it hopes will feed it again down the road? Will they bite hard, or simply graze the fingertips? Finally, in my dealings with outside consultants, I never found them to be all that insightful. As “visitors” to a department, I wouldn’t expect much more.

    I worked for several decades on the Public Service Employee Survey, and many departments would hire consulting firms to analyze their survey results for them. Based on what I saw, the firms assigned their brightest undergrads to crunch some numbers and produce some deck-ready graphics, and that was about the size of it. Of course, as was revealed some 15 or more years ago, when the OAG looked at departmental contracting for public-opinion research (POR), neither the contracting department or PWGSC (now PSPC) really had any accumen in determining value for money. The result was that all requests to solicit outside consultants for POR had to go through the Privy Council Office. Could *they* accurately assess value-for-money? I don’t know.

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